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Interest-Convergence Theory: Blacks progress only when Whites benefit
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Interest-Convergence Theory: Blacks progress only when Whites benefitEven today, after the 90s recession is long gone, Critical Race Theorists see the law taking steps backward in time. Bell writes that, “A ‘color-blind’ Constitution has become the battle cry for those on the Court who, in the very face of its devastation, maintain that discrimination is a thing of the past. The spirit of Plessy’s ‘separate but equal’ standard is revived in the Court’s willingness to employ disingenuous terms to disguise its continued willingness to sacrifice Black rights to further White interests” (Bell Rutgers 353). To Bell, the most significant example of the past’s return is in the Supreme Court’s return to the use of Plessy-esque rhetoric, painting Blacks as non-citizens. Delgado and Stefancic, for example, write that, “As a culture, and as a legal profession, we are rapidly returning to the regime of Plessy v. Ferguson’s separate but equal doctrine and the Civil Rights Cases’ view of blacks as imposers and whiners because they desire to live in American society on the same terms as whites” (n112). The idea of so-called ‘special rights,’ implying a desire by Blacks to gain unfair status over Whites, flies in the face of the neutral, but tacitly White legal system. None of the reactionary legal shifts surprise Bell, who sees them as foreshadowed by a long history of temporary gains in Black empowerment. A key tenet of CRT’s outlook on legal structure, called interest-convergence theory, argues “dominant white culture can tolerate minority successes only when these successes also serve the larger interests of whites” (Litowitz 18). A radical view of history, the interest-convergence theory casts a shadow over Black empowerment’s highest achievements, from Emancipation to Brown. Bell writes that, “The Brown decision, though, was less the long-sought remedy for Plessy than a reinforcement of a more basic, two-part principle of this country’s racial policies. Part One: society is always willing to sacrifice the rights of Black people in order to protect important economic or political interests of Whites. The Plessy v. Ferguson decision represents a prime example of Part One, less because it gave segregation the status of constitutional law, than because it sacrificed Black rights in order to gain the support of Whites for policies that harmed a great many White people. Part Two: the law recognizes the rights of Black people only when such recognition serves some economic or political interests of greater importance to Whites. Lincoln’s reluctant issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation to help the faltering effort to save the Union was an example of Part Two in action. Similarly, after World War II, the United States, the world leader in efforts to win allegiance of mostly non-White, third-world nations, discovered that practicing Jim Crow at home made it tough to advocate democracy abroad. The Brown decision, by promising to close the gap between the country’s ideals and its practices, provided an immediate boost to America’s foreign policy efforts” (Bell Rutgers 352). The convergence of Black and White interests was not simply a coincidence. Both the Truman and Eisenhower administrations used the Civil Rights movements in America in their foreign propaganda programs, and the Eisenhower administration referred specifically to the Brown decision in its propaganda despite the administration’s weak role in supporting the judicial move. However, that doesn’t mean that foreign policy analysts in either administration were not pressing for more Black civil rights. Dudziak writes that, “Concerns on the part of the State Department and others about how Soviet propaganda on American racism affected US foreign policy interests informed the Truman Administration’s pro-civil rights posture. The foreign policy problem was considered to be sufficiently important that the Justice Department sought out documentation from the State Department to use in its civil rights amicus briefs. The Justice Department devoted a considerable amount of space to these arguments, and stressed to the Supreme Court that a decision upholding segregation would have demonstrable, negative effects on international relations” (117). Protecting America’s image in the global community is probably one of the worst, or least important, reasons for granting civil rights to Blacks, but the Justice Department made the argument to the Supreme Court anyway because it benefited the foreign policy outreach efforts of America’s White elites. Given our earlier examinations of the unequal applications of the law between races, this aspect of the CRT argument may not come as a great surprise to Blacks, but for me it is thoroughly disturbing. I have grown up surrounded by racism, and yet oblivious to most of it because I had been convinced that things were always getting better, as Blacks in America had moved from slavery to segregation to, supposedly, full and equal citizenship. But Bell summarizes the shock CRT makes me feel when he writes, “My thesis is jarring, I think, because for too long we have comforted and consoled ourselves with the myth of ‘slow but steady’ racial progress. In fact, our racial status in this country has been a cyclical phenomenon in which legal rights are gained, then lost, then gained again in response to economic and political developments in a country over which blacks exercise little or no control. Civil rights law has always been a part of rather than an exception to this cyclical phenomenon” (Bell Howard 79). Neutrality is most easily damned as a legal philosophy because it begins with the assumption that true equality has already been achieved or is coming anytime soon on its own. “We cannot legislate morality” lawmakers say, because discrimination can only end when the people themselves stop discriminating. That may be true, but it probably doesn’t help that the law’s neutrality tacitly allows racism to continue instead of being condemned. The perspective of the victim is missing from legal analysis because law cannot be neutral if it takes on this perspective. 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